GOP stresses Tim Scott's credentials

Republicans, still smarting from their Election Day drubbing at the hands of minorities, know the significance of Rep. Tim Scott’s appointment to the Senate. But they’re taking care to ensure he’s introduced to the nation as a fiscal conservative rather than a black Republican.

South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, who tapped Scott for the open Senate seat on Monday, went out of her way to emphasize that the tea party favorite is eminently qualified, regardless of his skin color. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell called his selection “truly an historic moment” for South Carolina but made no mention of race.

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Issa, Polis & more on Scott

Scott accepts Senate seat

Neither did tea party allies Sen. Marco Rubio and Sen.-elect Ted Cruz, two Cuban-Americans who hailed Haley’s pick as a boon to fiscal conservatism and limited government principles.

When he replaces resigning Republican Sen. Jim DeMint early next month, Scott will become the first African-American senator from the Deep South since Reconstruction and the first black Republican in the Senate since Ed Brooke of Massachusetts retired in 1979.

Scott, 47, also will be the only African-American serving in the upper chamber. Illinois Democrat Roland Burris, who replaced Barack Obama in the Senate after he won the White House, last served in November 2010.

His appointment, largely expected among prognosticators, comes as the GOP reckons with its poor performance among minorities at the polls last month. Nine of 10 African-American voters backed Obama over Mitt Romney in the election. Among Hispanics, Obama crushed Romney, 71 percent to 27 percent.

Meanwhile, for the first time in history, white males will be in the minority in the House Democratic Caucus.

South Carolina’s senior senator, Republican Lindsey Graham, bluntly framed the problem this way last summer: “We’re not generating enough angry white guys to stay in business for the long term.”

But black Republican leaders warn that Scott’s appointment is no quick fix for the GOP’s demographics problem.

“If Republicans think appointing Tim Scott or having J.C. Watts sitting in the chairman’s seat at the RNC solves the problem, it doesn’t,” former Rep. J.C. Watts (R-Okla.), who is African-American and mulling a possible challenge for the Republican National Committee chairmanship, told POLITICO on Monday.

“Surely [Scott] can help, but that alone does not replace the grunt work in the trenches that needs to be done to establish relationships with these communities and demographics,” Watts added.

Other GOP strategists, however, point out that the appointment helps correct one voter misconception: All Republicans are old, white men.

“The unique thing about Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz and Tim Scott is that they have mass appeal in the GOP base. They’re not niche candidates representing a district specifically drawn to be won by a minority,” said Ana Navarro, who led John McCain’s national campaign for Hispanic votes in the 2008 presidential race.

Good luck to the new Senator, but the GOP unfortunately must be further from reality than I'd hoped. Until they move closer to the middle, they will not get my vote or others who find then TOO extreme. If they would stop kowtowing to the Talibangelical and the super wealthy, they couldwin easily.

Can we talk about Roland Burris for a second morons? Just another black hack thug from Chicago.

U.S. Sen. Roland Burris, under fire for amending his testimony on his appointment to the U.S. Senate, that he told the panel investigating former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich that he would file an addendum to his remarks.

"There was no change of any of our testimony. We followed up as we promised to the impeachment committee," he told reporters, in a Chicago press conference that lasted just minutes.

Burris took no questions from reporters but said all the information he supplied was voluntary and not the result of contact from federal agents investigating the former governor.

Any suggestion otherwise is "absolutely, positively not true," he said.

House Republicans say they want an independent probe into whether Burris perjured himself in front of the panel by not revealing he had conversations with five Blagojevich allies besides the former chief of staff he testified about speaking with.

The situation is so embarrasing that even Ill. Sen. Dick "Our troops are Nazis" Durbin has called for Burris to resign.

Sure he is. Come back to us again with that after he is actually elected by his state to serve in the position he was just APPOINTED to.....which is merely a crass and cynical PR move crafted by the GOP machine and dutifully deployed by one-term governor Haley.

I can see you folks are POLITICO are nervous about this appointment. How will you handle a conservative black man? Oh, that's right, you have experience with this. Look how you drove Col. Allen West out of office. Well, good luck with that this time around. You all are a special breed of bigots.

Scott is anti union- he proposed a bill to cut off food stamps for entire families if one member went on strike. One of the most anti-union members of Congress, Scott proposed a bill two months after entering Congress in 2011 to kick families off food stamps if one adult were participating in a strike. Scott’s legislation made no exception for children or other dependents.

as for the ten commandments - Scott said when he was sued for violating the Constitution and a Circuit Judge’s orders, Scott was nonplussed: “Whatever it costs in the pursuit of this goal (of displaying the Commandments) is worth it.”

Scott defended fairness of giving billions in subsidies to Big Oil. Scott and his Republican allies in Congress voted repeatedly last year to protect more than $50 billion in taxpayer subsidies for Big Oil corporations. When asked Scott whether it was fair to do that, especially at a time when oil companies are earning tens of billions in profit every quarter, the Tea Party freshman defended the industry: “fair is a relative word,” said Scott.

Finally he helped slash South Carolina’s HIV/AIDS budget. As a state representative, Scott backed a proposal to cut the state’s entire HIV/AIDS budget, despite the fact that South Carolina ranks in the top-third of reported AIDS cases. The cuts were ultimately included in the state’s budget, impacting more than 2,000 HIV-positive South Carolinians who needed help paying for their medication.